1. Technical Field
The invention relates to an ink jet recording method and records made by the ink jet recording method.
2. Related Art
Records carrying a bright image on their recording surface have recently been in growing demand. Known methods for recording bright images include pressing a metal foil sheet onto a recording medium having a smooth surface, depositing metal on a plastic film in vacuum, applying a bright ink to a recording medium and then compressing the medium with the ink, and so forth. However, these methods have disadvantages such as a complicated recording process and a limited range of suitable recording media, and thus some techniques to record bright images by an ink jet process have been proposed, including that disclosed in JP-A-2008-208330.
However, image formation by an ink jet process is disadvantageous in, for example, the following ways: The formed bright image (e.g., an image expressing metallic luster) has a low lightness; The image transfer method and the recording medium often involve the use of a bright material somewhat lacking in lightness, and this results in the failure to achieve the intended degree of lightness. In an ink jet recording method, a specific example of the image formation by an ink jet process, the bright ink contains a bright pigment in the form of metal fragments (e.g., aluminum fragments), metal particles (e.g., silver particles), or the like, and the use of these fragments or particles unfortunately leads to a reduced lightness of the image, making it difficult to form a bright image having an intended degree of lightness (or to increase the gloss of the image). In other words, known and ordinary techniques for recording a bright image on a white recording medium, for example, cannot achieve their aim because the formed image lacks in lightness at the portions that should be bright.